I'm very new here and still struggling to understand how things work on the site. I go very regularly to the gym and "enjoy" the treadmill, the rowing machine , and the bike...I would like to put weight ON but a lot of the emphasis seems to be on losing weight and also I would like to take up running again which I was quite ok with when I was young ...I am now old and wise ( not really ) but would like to run a reasonable 5 - 10k as soon as I can .....

2 Replies

If you want to pit on weight, presumably in the form of lean muscle rather than fat, then more cardio is not really going to be the thing that does it for you. Running and rowing and cycling are excellent exercise to make you fitter, but they will not make you bigger. To build muscle you need to do resistance exercise, either with your own bodyweiht or with weights or weight machines. I don't mean becoming bulked up like Schwarzenegger but the principle is the same albeit scaled down.

You can run and row as well as doing resistance exercise, of course, and should, but on their own they will not aid you in gaining weight.

If you do want to run, getting to a reasonable 5 or 10k is a good goal, but if you want to get there injury-free, think in terms of getting there as sustainably as you can rather than as quickly as you can.

Welcome. I'm quite new to this forum too, but I find that this place is all about encouraging each other and sharing advice on running for beginners. Some try to loose some weight, some try to get fit, some try to combat diabetes, some just like to run and then we share what we think about it. I don't know if running is well-suitet for gaining weight/building muscles, you'll have to tell us how it goes.